


a wound that love had opened

by throughfire



Series: Buck and Eddie [13]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:09:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28735509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throughfire/pseuds/throughfire
Summary: Buck lets the open wound of his own voice be healed by the sight of Eddie before him, risen out of the ashes after his fall and standing, breathing, biting out sarcasm to colleagues as though he doesn’t have blood running down in miniature rivers from the edge of the gauze and down his arm to his fingertips, where drops of it crash towards the ground.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Series: Buck and Eddie [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630543
Comments: 39
Kudos: 263





	a wound that love had opened

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have a fic with ALL the medical inaccuracies for the sake of some (bad and barely there) plot!
> 
> (I would have shoved this in a new ficlet collection for the new year if it weren't for the fact that I have a Bad Feeling about what season four will do to my will to write, and a collection of one ficlet just sounds dumb.)

”Oh, he _finally_ has the decency to show up, huh?” Chimney calls out. There’s childish glee dancing in his eyes, and the tilt of his smile adds a softness to the words that removes any harsh impact, makes the teasing land gently.

It’s a Saturday morning, and Eddie is walking into the firehouse briskly with slants of sunshine chasing after him from the outside. He’s six minutes late for their shift, and he rolls his eyes as he moves past Chimney in the doorway. Once further inside the locker room, he addresses Bobby’s presence with a muttered, “Sorry.”

“Is Chris okay?”

“What?” Eddie’s head snaps up. The very implication that Chris might not be fine despite it being a mere five minutes since they parted clearly strikes him with the briefest flash of panic before his natural calm settles in; rationality visibly levelling his thoughts and lowering his shoulders. He shakes his head, goes back to the routine of easing his duffle bag to the floor and opening his locker. “Yeah, of course he is. Just – some turbulence on the way over here.”

Bobby hums out knowing amusement in response; Hen smiles down at her phone. Parental sympathy rolling through the room like gentle waves in a summer breeze; the beach settling into levity, with no danger to report of out there after all.

Chimney, with his own child still safely carried in Maddie’s belly where it can’t cause a lot of roadside trouble yet, makes a quip about airplanes that appropriately enough flies right over all of their heads, undisturbed.

And Buck just keeps watching on quietly, allows his body to settle gratefully back into the familiarity of Eddie’s presence among them, and waits.

*

When they’re on their way out to their first call of the shift, he pushes his foot forward into the narrow space between them and nudges the toe of his boot against Eddie’s; poses curiosity in his own eyes when Eddie’s warm gaze locks with his.

Eddie has sunshine scattered in his hair, and his skin looks golden in the morning light. He breathes out slowly.

“There was a crow on our street this morning. Injured – think it might have been run over and left there,” Eddie says. “Chris saw it when we were getting into the car, tucked up against the curb in front of the neighbor’s house, and he wanted to help. Refused to go anywhere without it, without doing something.”

Buck can feel his eyebrows tilt inwards, his heart grow heavy with concern. “What _did_ you do?”

“Panicked?” Eddie snorts softly. He shakes his head, with self-deprecation nestled in his posture. “I don’t know anything about birds, about what they need or how to help them. I just ran back inside and grabbed a towel to wrap the poor thing up in and tried not to hurt it any further. I think something was wrong with its wing, it looked rough.”

Buck makes a noise, an understanding hum. He gets it.

“Did you try to give it some water?” he asks, following the weight of his heart forward to the edge of his seat until his fingers against his seatbelt feel like the only things keeping him from flying in every turn of the road. He can remember the feeling of cold water against those same fingertips; tilting droplets off of them to a perched throat that refused to open up. “It might have been left out there a long time, dehydrated and – what?”

There’s a tenderness to Eddie’s gaze, now. A small, private smile that softens the mutter of his voice through the comms when he says, almost to himself; “Of course you’ve done it, too.”

As though his place in Buck’s heart gives him free access to Buck’s memories; as though he can see the green imagery of a baby bird flapping fear into the damp leaves of a forest floor reflected in Buck’s eyes now, and understands it perfectly. Understands _him_.

Buck doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know how to tread this moment, because it feels bigger than it should be and he doesn’t know why – what’s happening, what kind of undercurrent of emotion that is shifting them right now. So he bites back fragmented words, tucks unspoken feelings back into his heart where they can press up against Eddie like braille from the very walls of that muscle, loud and certain in their own way. Eddie’s to interpret.

The faint traces of a smile are still tugging at the corners of Eddie’s mouth when he says, “So yeah, Carla and Chris were busy trying to get some water into the bird when I left her place. She was already on the phone, chasing down people who could help them out at that point, but I don’t know how it went. It was all so rushed, and I wasn’t exactly in a position to promise Chris that it would be fine before I drove off, but I… well, I hope it is now.”

It explains the slight tension that Buck saw in Eddie’s jaw this morning, the furrow of his brow and fixed set of his shoulders when he walked in. There’s still that heaviness to Eddie now that always seems to burden his entire skeleton much like ornaments on the branches of a Christmas tree every time he thinks that he’s failing his son somehow. Every time the vicious demons within him tell him that he’s not good enough for that boy, even though he is. Even though he’s amazing.

“Call him when we get back,” Buck suggests, nudging the toes of their boots together once more. “Get an update. I want to know how the crow is doing, too.”

*

The morning passes in a blur of work. Smoke and flames in the wake of an explosion in an abandoned warehouse, followed up by a second call that has them hurtling back down the streets of LA before they have a proper chance to find their footing, to breathe.

It’s long past lunch now, the walls of their stomachs churning around emptiness. The sun has shed its sleepy softness and is glaring down at them from high up in the sky, and the house in front of them has been reduced to a smoking wreck of ash and rubble.

Buck knocks the helmet off his head with the back of his hand when he wipes a palm across his face. Lets it lie there on the ground, after, as he leans back against a sympathetic lamppost and tries to exhale.

A few feet away from him, at the back of the truck, Chimney is hovering nervously, saying, “Are you _sure_ you’re okay? You fell through a damn floor, Eddie, I—”

“ _Fine_ , Chim,” Eddie tells him. An echo of something expressed seven times in the last five minutes; all of them having asked, all of them having hovered the way Chimney’s doing now. Chimney’s the only one of them who was shoved out of the way by Eddie’s hands before the floor gave out, though. The only one Eddie took a fall for, and the only one struggling to back up and give Eddie space because of it, now. “Nothing to worry about.”

Buck knows Eddie; knows that Eddie believes in what he’s saying, that it’s not a lie. But his own worried gaze is too aware of the torn state of Eddie’s shirt and the equally torn and bloody flesh beneath it, all over his shoulder and along his left arm. A scatter of love bites from the floor, from the impact of a crash that Buck could barely hear over the hungry roar of the fire inside that house.

Soot and dirt and open flesh, and an expression of utter calm covering all the hurt up way too well, because that’s what Eddie does so expertly. Levels out emotion; tucks it into bone and then muscles past it in order to remain calm on the outside, a reassuring surface for everyone else’s sake. And Buck hates it, that tightly knitted grip that Eddie has of himself – hates the past that drove Eddie into thinking that this is the best thing he can do, the best way to move through life.

“Chimney, seriously,” Eddie’s saying now, his voice too light, too heavily framed by amusement. Each word served as though part of some grand joke. “I don’t need to be checked over, it’s fine. Just a scratch. Hand me a compress and let me be – that’s all the gratitude I need from you, okay?”

Chimney’s expression finally starts to ease up, then. He hesitantly cracks a smile and fishes out a massive wad of gauze from his bag while shaking his head. Once he’s handed it over, along with a mutter of ‘ _thanks, dumbass’_ , he looks up to the side and catches Buck’s gaze. He gives Buck a pointed look that Buck simply confirms with a nod, a determined clench of his jaw. Then Chimney’s gone, headed in the direction of Hen and their only other patient.

Buck stays still by the truck, trembling slightly from a mix of crashing adrenaline and building irritation. He’s failing thoroughly to see the same humor that Eddie sees in this situation. To see how Eddie getting hurt could ever be considered a joke; how Eddie literally going up in smoke and Buck having to scream into shadows after him as though his voice could ever conjure up flesh and bone or _anything_ more useful than raw emotion could possibly be something to laugh about.

But he remains quiet about it. Watches as Eddie one-handedly fits the gauze to parts of the wounded flesh of his shoulder and then bites off bits of surgical tape from a roll in Chimney’s bag and sticks it all in place.

He lets the open wound of his own voice be healed by the sight of Eddie before him, risen out of the ashes after his fall and standing, breathing, biting out sarcasm to colleagues as though he doesn’t have blood running down in miniature rivers from the edge of the gauze and down his arm to his fingertips, where drops of it crash towards the ground. It’s as though he cannot feel the aftershocks of relief in the walls of Buck’s heart around him.

*

Back at the station, everything turns into an exhausted sort of rush that pushes most of them out of their gear and up the stairs to the loft in a desperate hunt for food. Buck takes his time, though, stood off to the side and watching Eddie from the corner of his eye.

Eddie hasn’t taken any of his clothes off yet, sat with his boots anchored heavily on the floor on either side of the bench and looking down at the phone in his hand. His expression is pinched with concern, his thumb determined where it moves over the screen.

When the room is finally empty around them, Buck straddles the bench in front of Eddie, bumps their knees together and studies the beauty of Eddie’s face. Traces the contradicting, ugly marks of violence that the burning house pressed into that skin in the form of cuts over an eyebrow, a cheekbone, the jaw, and waits for Eddie to lift his bruised chin and watch him back.

“I sent Carla a text, asking for an update,” Eddie murmurs eventually, finally casting his gaze up. “Asked if Chris is okay.”

Buck hums in acknowledgement. Stays in his spot, with his kneecaps welded to Eddie’s by the pure force of his desperation. They both smell of smoke, of sweat and exhaustion.

Eddie arches an eyebrow at him. Says, “I’ll let you know when she answers, don’t worry.”

Buck hums again. Waits for Eddie to aim further signs of confusion at him before he says; “I know why you’re really stalling. It wasn’t just to send a text to Carla.”

_I’m inside of you, too_ , he thinks. _In_ your _heart, feeling things. And I know that you didn’t invite me in here, that you’re scared to trust anyone not to damage what’s left, but I broke into you. I want to be here, for you. I’m staying._

“Your shoulder,” he says in response to Eddie’s dismissive noise. “I know it hurts, Eddie. Just let me look at it.”

“I can do that myself, Buck,” Eddie tells him, waving a hand in the air between them as though trying to dismiss him. “Just go and help Bobby with the lunch, yeah? If there’s two of you it should be quicker, and then we might actually get to eat something before we’re called out again.”

Buck is stubborn too, though. Says, “I’m not going anywhere until we’ve checked you over. Chimney may have let you off, but I won’t.”

“I’ve got far more medical experience than you do, Buck, it’s—”

“But I _care_ more,” Buck says desperately. There’s suddenly steel spearing his voice, as unsuspected in there as the strike of the hand of someone beloved against an innocent cheek. The aftermath is quiet, the water in Buck’s eyes salty and barely held back by his lash lines. All of him suddenly feels like a threat to the very pain that he claims an urge to tend to, as though he’ll make the open injury that Eddie is sting and be something new that Eddie will have to heal from. His voice holds a tremble, much like a flame caught in a draft when it’s trying its hardest to fuel itself into usefulness, as he adds a hushed, “I’ll be more careful.”

Eddie sets his phone down on the sliver of space between them on the bench, then he’s pressing a curled finger to the underside of Buck’s chin and urging his head up softly. The warmth of his hand escapes a moment later. Moves, and lands just as gently beneath Buck’s eye where it gets assaulted by the first leaping tear, but it doesn’t even twitch. Isn’t injured by salt, doesn’t cower in the face of emotion.

“You and Christopher, huh?” Eddie breathes out, with wonder in his voice. “Hearts as big as the sun, nursing injured birds back to health and never giving up.”

_And still,_ Buck thinks, _you are perhaps the most tender one of all of us, with the way you’ll give us anything that’ll make us happy, the way you’ll encourage us if we fail._

All he wants to do is give Eddie something back; be less saltwater and steel and more twig, leaf and nest. Become the safe place for Eddie that Eddie already is for him.

It’s so quiet around them, around the warm pressure of Eddie’s hand against his cheek, that they can hear the buzz of Eddie’s phone against the wood of the bench perfectly. Eddie’s fingers fall from Buck’s skin and his thumb proceeds to open up the picture he’s received of Chris sat next to the bird in a cardboard box full of towels and bowls of seeds and water. There’s an empty water bottle in Chris’s hand and a sunshine beam on his face. The crow’s right wing is wrapped up far better than Eddie’s shoulder is.

Buck squints down at the upside-down image. Asks, “Does it look any better than it did this morning?”

“Think so,” Eddie hums. “It’s sitting up properly at least – that’s got to mean something.”

“And Chris is happy.”

Eddie smiles. “He is.”

Buck gives him some time to just look at that picture, to settle into the knowledge that Chris hasn’t had to face a reality where his best isn’t good enough to save an innocent creature today – that his son’s bright outlook on life hasn’t been smudged quite yet.

Then, with the warmth of Eddie’s smile working as fuel inside his chest, he nudges the tip of a gentle finger to the back of Eddie’s hand. It’s a question, a wish, a quiet demand for Eddie to let Buck love him.

Eddie looks up at him. There’s less tension in his body now, and the tenderness gleams as beautifully as ever in his eyes when they take Buck in. Then he nods imperceptibly, and finally slides back a few inches, just enough to swing his left leg over the bench and give Buck the space to work with, to slide in closer.

Buck settles on his knees on the bench, and eases concerned fingers beneath tape and gauze before he prods gently at the torn fabric of the t-shirt beneath. It clings awfully to the edges of the wounds; threatens to cause even more damage if he pulls too harshly on it.

“And you call yourself a medical expert, huh?” Buck mutters, though his voice is thick with emotion. “This is a _mess_ , Eddie.”

There’s blood everywhere. Some of it is dried and crusted; flakes of it falling from the surgical tape when he peels bit after bit of it away as gingerly as he can. The rest is fresh and starts seeping out once the compress is lifted off of Eddie’s skin. While the cuts along his arm are already mostly scabbed over, the ones right over his shoulder are deeper – volcanoes spitting out their dark red lava with newfound intent.

Buck’s fingers slide helplessly in the slick warmth of it, horrified, before he realizes that he’s already messed up.

“Get the bag, Buck,” Eddie murmurs in that same instant, echoing Buck’s distraught thoughts. “It’s just a few cuts – nothing bad. I won’t bleed out on you.”

It’s not _just a few cuts_ , but the last of Eddie’s statements is at least a truth, and it’s handed over in the form of another joke, mirroring the infuriating humor that was delivered from the back of the truck earlier. This time it’s Eddie’s way of being assuring, as though Buck’s trembling fingertips against his shoulder were louder than the pain he must feel in it – the need to calm those fingertips seemingly more urgent than the need to calm himself.

Eddie definitely expects Buck to bite something sarcastic back at him in response, now, because that’s what they usually do. They play their emotions out as though it’s a game, stealthily, both of them scared of losing.

But the meaning of that loss is suddenly graver, now, and more acute after the scene Buck had to stand back and witness among the hungry flames of the house earlier. Buck’s voice is still not quite healed – the sutures not put in place to hold his need for assurance back when he pleas, “You promise you won’t?”

Eddie looks at Buck for a long moment. Seems to be gauging Buck’s expression, the tone of his voice and the pressure of his fingers where they’re still pressed to the mess of Eddie’s shoulder, unafraid of blood and dirt and damage. _Holding on_.

His eyes are achingly tender and gleaming; their warmth the safest thing that Buck knows.

“Promise,” Eddie says quietly. Then he waits. Allows that shine in his eyes to gain intensity – build up to a full-blown sparkle of amusement. Bright, light, _familiar_. He’s smiling crookedly when he adds, “Want me to come with you? Hold your hand?”

_Yes_ , Buck thinks instinctively. _For the rest of our lives._ _You and me and Chris_.

“No,” he manages to splutter half a second later. His turn, his go; the dice landing on a safe step forward into familiar, playful territory. “Stay here. Try to stay out of trouble for twenty fucking seconds while I’m gone.”

Eddie grins at that. Pleased. _Beautiful_. “You too, Buckley.”

“Fair enough, I suppose,” Buck snorts. He shakes his head, can’t help but smile back. Then he goes.

He washes his hands quickly in a convenient sink. Grabs what he needs from the back of the truck and returns to Eddie feeling a bit less frazzled, a bit more focused on the task at hand.

There are a pair of scissors in the bag that he uses to cut up the remains of the shoulder and neckline of Eddie’s t-shirt, leaving him free to peel the stuck bits of fabric away from the wounds gently with some tweezers and the tips of his fingers.

After, he wipes Eddie’s skin free of blood, dust and dirt. Cleans around the wounds carefully and tries not to search for pieces of himself in the tendrils of blood that escape every time he eases the pressure of the new compress, tries not to fear himself leaking out of there and losing his place in Eddie’s heart, his bloodstream.

He marvels, instead, at the calm with which Eddie sits beneath his touch; the way he’s allowed to do this, take his time and be gentle with a man who’s handled himself so roughly for so many years. A man used to flight suddenly sat still under Buck’s care. There’s no desperate attempt to get away, to use a broken wing to escape. There’s just trust.

Buck lifts the gauze again, assessing the damage beneath. There’s no volcanic force anymore; the flow of blood slowed down to a thick dribble, pressed back by gauze and affection and molded into something more manageable. The wounds look angry. Red and raw and painful. The bruising all along his arm will be horrific.

“I don’t. I mean, it’s not—” Buck stumbles. He knows that Eddie is right – that his care doesn’t match up to Eddie’s medical knowledge and that he should have pushed his own need to be a part of this out of the way and made sure that Hen or Chimney got to care for Eddie instead. “You need stitches.”

“Buck—”

“You _do_. I may not have any medical training, but I’ve had to get enough stitches over the years to know that you need some now,” he says. “I’m not asking you, Eddie. This isn’t a discussion.”

Eddie looks back at him. Looks ready to argue, but seemingly catches something in Buck’s gaze, because the fire of his objection dies out and settles into a realization that widens those gorgeous eyes and makes them shine with something soft, something painful.

And it hits Buck, then, that this can perhaps be the first time that Eddie has someone who’s prepared to fight for him, who’ll refuse to love him any less no matter how hard he tries to push them away.

Eddie sighs. His shoulder sinks with the weight of resignation under Buck’s hand.

“Fine,” he says. “Wrap me back up and then I’ll talk to Bobby – tell him I need to be checked over.”

Buck lets a moment pass, fingers entirely still over the compress. He breathes in relief; exhales a barely audible, “Thanks.”

“No,” Eddie shakes his head. Takes his time to think, to collect his thoughts before he voices them. “I’m the one who should be saying that.”

Buck makes a dismissive noise. “I don’t think I’m deserving of it, though. I shouldn’t have taken it upon myself to do what I’m not actually qualified to—”

“Not for that,” Eddie cuts in. “Just – thank you.”

_For being here_ , goes unspoken. _For breaking into me. For refusing to leave._

All Buck can do is nod. Swallow around emotion and force his fingers back into motion. He presses a new, protective compress over the deep wounds across Eddie’s shoulder and sticks it down with an excessive amount of medical tape before he leans back to assess it all. His work, and Eddie’s state.

“You need a new shirt,” he realizes, and without really thinking about it he finds himself moving, grabbing the hoodie that’s hanging off a hook beside his abandoned turnout coat and handing it over.

Eddie stands up in front of Buck and takes the hoodie with the curious beginnings of a smile hiding in the corners of his mouth. He slips the remaining strips of his t-shirt off of himself with some difficulty before he’s finally free to zip Buck’s sweater up around his bare torso.

It has Buck’s last name on it. White, neat lettering printed on the left side of the chest to spell out _Buckley_ there, as though it serves as a shield on the outside while everything that remains of Buck outside of that name protects the inside, nestled stubbornly in that heart.

Though he supposes that ‘shield’ may be the wrong word. Thinks that it might be more of an address.

_I live here,_ it says _. This is my nest_.

Eddie snorts softly. It’s enough to snap Buck’s attention back up to Eddie’s face, where he’s met with an expression of utter amusement. There’s happiness shining in those eyes, framed by exhaustion. It sparkles beautifully.

“You’re ridiculous,” Eddie remarks quietly, and then he’s fitting his palm around the back of Buck’s neck and drawing him in, _kissing him_.

It’s soft. Almost painfully tender at first, and all Buck can do is dig his tired fingers into the front of his gifted hoodie and hold on for dear life, hold on to this moment, this bliss, until his knuckles bruise against the line of the zipper.

The slow drag of Eddie’s lips over his own is intoxicating, and his entire core aches with wonder, all of him overcome with a sense of belonging grander than anything he’s felt before.

These hearts, these arms and hands and broken wings, he realizes, they truly do make up a home.

His breathing is rough when they part, and his eyelids are heavy with lingering pleasure, though he fights against it. Forces his eyes to open so that he can look at Eddie – take in the beauty of that face and marvel at the blatant desire that trembles in Eddie’s gaze.

The hand at the back of his own neck is heavy; its thumb affectionate where it moves in circles over Buck’s skin, and he hates knowing that he has to move away from it, that he can’t stay in this moment no matter how hard he clings to the teeth of that zipper.

Eddie sighs, as though reading Buck’s mind. The reluctance is palpable in his voice when he says, “I suppose I should find Bobby, then. And maybe grab something to eat before I pass out on top of everything else.”

Buck nods, though he’s too distracted to roll his eyes at the last comment. There’s a sudden twinge of insecurity beneath his breastbone that makes his gaze waver, makes him seek comfort in the brand of his own name across Eddie’s chest.

“We’ll talk later?” he wonders, forcing himself to be brave. To hold on to more than just fabric; to not let this thing between them go away. He gives humor another chance when he adds, “Use actual words? Not just wave this off and never bring it up again?”

It makes Eddie chuckle, all of him bright with happiness when he says, “ _Yes_ , Buck, we’ll talk.”

Then he kisses Buck again, swift and soft and full of laughter before he leaves, as though bookmarking their place for later, sealing the promise of his words in.


End file.
